your apples look great too....so now you have successfully made dried apfel schnitzels....(my folks would just call them schnitzels, but Cerdip pointed out that the correct term for apple is apfel and schnitzels means slices)

I think that I may just stick with the ones you mentioned, Egg, and give the berries a rest - except maybe for strawberries. They were the only ones that didn't turn out well. I also intend to try peaches and pears.

A few weekends on this, and I should have a couple of cases of dried fruits stashed away. Then for some dried veggies - carrots, green peppers, maybe onions.

Well, I dunno if there is any approved way, but I'm going to slice'em. I can get vats of the freeze-dried "chopped" onions at the restaurant supply house cheaper than heck, so I don't see any reason to reinvent the wheel there. But it might be nice to put a slice or two of onion on my venison burger at the PAW barbecue.

Here's the final take of my first efforts at dehydration. This represents one large pineapple, 3 pounds of mixed berries, 20 pounds of bananas, and five pounds of apples.

I'm going to keep up with this. Except for the prep - and I'm a cook, I'm used to kitchen prep - this is a very easy, and very cheap way of preserving fruits and veggies, hopefully for long term storage of several years in sealed cans with dessicants and O2sorbers.

well i'm happy to confirm bill's successyesterday i successfuly did a bunch of bananas, and some apples.right not i have pinapple drying, and it all looks as good as bill's pics.the only thing is my used unit is only 300 watts, and it seems like it takes a lot longer than it should......also there are 4 racks, so batch size is pretty small.

Yeah. Actually, I goofed. The Nesco I was looking at on Amazon was a 750 watt unit for about fifty bucks. The one I bought at Bed, Bath, Beyond for about fifty bucks looked identical, but it was a 500 watt unit. I wish I'd waited now and bought the bigger unit. But I'll make do with this one. I can't afford the money to buy duplicates right now.

if the garden...3000 sq ft....produces like it did last year at 2000....i will be using the 300W, what ever one i buy, the oven with all the cookie racks i can get my hands on, and freezing for temp holding until drying space opens up....if i can rent a dryer, i probably will.

why so much??? i am prepping for 10. the inlaws (4 adults) cannot as they are all disabled(age and mental)..and the brother in law has some land, but no talent, and even less money...altho he has started, maybe there is hope for him yet. the inlaws can't grow it, but they can everything i take them, which this year will probably be a lot.not complaining, i love growing the stuff, and am glad to help out where i can.

now if you don't care about sugars and calories...you can spinkle sugar and cinnamon on the apples...and then dehydrate...the kids love this ....now that I can't have sugar, I need to try something like a splenda mixture... (see the post on the shelf life of dehydrated foods-amazing how long this woman has stored her apples)